DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm not gonna dress it up any more than it needs — because it doesn't need much. Somewhere in Newton County, right where you're rolling through, there once stood a place called the Harrell House. Confederate veteran David F.
Harrell built it in 1865 — right there on the military road, where stagecoaches were still kicking up dust and travelers needed a roof and a meal and maybe a reason to believe the world wasn't all mud and hardship. Now, the Harrell House did its job well enough that it eventually got itself a new name. Not from a famous guest, not from a battle or a deed — it was renamed for something sitting right there in the middle of the dining room.
A hand-made lazy Susan table, big enough to seat twelve to fifteen guests at a time, loaded down with food. People started calling the place the Round Table Inn, and you can see why that name would stick to a hungry traveler's memory. Then came 1927.
The inn burned. Just like that — a place that had been feeding and sheltering people for more than sixty years, gone in a fire. That's the kind of thing that ends most stories.
But not this one. Because David F. Harrell's granddaughter, Helen Duncan, rebuilt it.
And when that marker went up in 1965, she was still running it. Still keeping the doors open on the same site where her grandfather once waved in the stagecoaches. Some things, it turns out, are harder to burn than wood.
What the marker says
On this site stood Harrell House, built in 1865 by Confederate veteran David F. Harrell to serve stagecoaches and others traveling military road. Renamed for its food-laden, hand-made lazy Susan table, seating 12 to 15 quests. Burned, 1927. Rebuilt and still run by granddaughter Helen Duncan. (1965)